The present invention relates to an improved voice/music piece reproduction apparatus and method for reproducing a particular voice sequence at designated timing within a music piece sequence.
In the field of mobile or portable phones (e.g., cellular phones) and the like today, it has been known to perform visual display and voice (e.g., human voice) reproduction in synchronism with a music piece. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2002-101191 discloses a technique for audibly reproducing a music piece and voices in synchronism at predetermined timing.
Also, as an example of the technique for audibly reproducing voices (e.g., human voices) in synchronism with a music piece, there has been known a method, in accordance with which both a music piece sequence and a voice sequence are defined in a single sequence file so that a music piece and voices are audible reproduced by reproducing the sequence file. FIG. 13 is a block diagram schematically showing a general setup of a conventional voice/music piece reproduction apparatus for practicing the method. In the conventional voice/music piece reproduction apparatus, a voice-added music piece data file 51 is loaded into sound middleware 53 by a player 52, and the sound middleware 53 interprets the loaded file to generate music-piece reproducing sound source control data and voice reproducing sound source control data and outputs these generated sound source control data to a sound source unit 54. The sound source unit 54 includes a music-piece reproducing sound source and a voice reproducing sound source, and the sound source unit 54 mixes tone and voice signals reproduced by the respective sound sources and outputs the mixed result to a speaker 55.
The voice sequence included in the voice-added music piece data file includes time information indicative of generation timing of individual voices to be audibly reproduced or sounded, and the voice sequence can be synchronized with the music piece sequence in accordance with the time information. Thus, when editing the voice-added music piece data file or revising reproduced contents of the voice sequence, the conventional voice/music piece reproduction apparatus must edit or revise given portions while interpreting the time information of the two sequences to confirm synchronization between the voices and the music piece, so that the editing or revision would require a considerable time and labor. Further, where a plurality of reproduction patterns differing only in to-be-reproduced voices are necessary, a same music piece sequence must be prepared in correspondence with the respective to-be-reproduced voices, which would result in a significant waste in terms of a data size particularly in small-size equipment, such as portable phones.